The present invention relates to the creation of input fields in electronic documents.
It has become increasingly common to create, transmit, and display documents in electronic format. Electronic documents have a number of advantages over paper documents including their ease of transmission, their compact storage, and their ability to be edited and/or electronically manipulated. A page in an electronic document can include various types of graphical elements, including text, line art, and images. Electronic documents are generally created by computer programs (also called application programs or simply applications) that can be executed by a user on a computer to create and edit electronic documents and to produce (directly or indirectly) printed output defined by the documents. Such programs include the Adobe Illustrator® and Photoshop® products, both available from Adobe Systems Incorporated of San Jose, Calif. Computer programs typically maintain electronic documents as document files that can be saved on a computer hard drive or a floppy diskette. An electronic document does not necessarily correspond to a document file. An electronic document can be stored in a portion of a document file that holds other documents, in a single document file dedicated to the electronic document in question, or in multiple coordinated document files. Graphical elements in electronic documents can be represented in vector form, raster form, or in hybrid forms.
An electronic document is provided by an author, distributor or publisher (referred to as “publisher” herein) who often desires that the document be viewed with a particular appearance, such as the appearance with which it was created. A portable electronic document can be viewed and manipulated on a variety of different platforms and can be presented in a predetermined format where the appearance of the document as viewed by a reader is as it was intended by the publisher. One such predetermined format is the Portable Document Format (PDF) developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated. An example of page-based software for creating, reading, and displaying PDF documents is the Adobe Acrobat®) program, also of Adobe Systems Incorporated. The Adobe Acrobat® program is based on Adobe's PostScript® technology, which describes formatted pages of a document in a device-independent fashion. An Adobe Acrobat® program on one platform can create, display, edit, print, annotate, etc. a PDF document produced by another Adobe Acrobat® program running on a different platform, regardless of the type of computer platform used. A document in a certain format or language can be translated into a PDF document using the Adobe Acrobat® program. A PDF document can be quickly displayed on any computer platform having the appearance intended by the publisher, allowing the publisher to control the final appearance of the document.
Electronic documents can include one or more interactive digital input fields (referred to as “input fields” herein) for receiving information from a user. An input field (including any information provided by a user) can be associated with a document file of an electronic document either directly or indirectly. Different types of input fields include form fields, sketch fields, text fields, and the like. Form fields are typically associated with electronic documents that seek information from a user. Form fields provide locations at which a user can enter information onto an electronic document. A text form field allows a user to enter text (e.g., by typing on a keyboard). Other types of form fields include buttons, check boxes, combo boxes, list boxes, radio buttons, and signature fields. Sketch fields are typically associated with electronic documents that contain graphical illustrations and/or artwork. Sketch fields provide locations at which a user can add graphical illustrations and/or artwork to an electronic document, such as by manipulating a pointing tool such as a mouse or digitizing pen. Generally, text fields can be associated with any electronic document. Text fields are locations at which a user can add text to an electronic document.
A publisher or user can generate an input field, such as a form field for a PDF document using an Adobe Acrobat® form tool. Conventionally, an input field is generated by defining an area of the input field, naming (or labeling) the input field, and specifying its type (e.g., form field, sketch field, text field, and the like). The area of the input field is typically defined by selecting a location in the electronic document and specifying a shape or size of the input field—e.g., by using a pointing device to draw a shape representing an input field of the required size.
Input fields can also be generated with software programs that automatically detect the presence of one or more possible input field locations in an electronic document. Typically, once a possible field location is detected, the software program generates an input field automatically at the location without the aid of a publisher or user.